I play a few times a year, maybe once per quarter I'll buy $5 worth. Very rarely (once every 2 years) I'll splurge $20 on some Pick 6 and some scratch-offs.

I know I won't win, but it's nice to dream. I don't smoke or drink or do a bunch of other stuff that costs people money every week or day, so $20-$40 per year isn't too bad. Like all gambling, done without restraint and it can really mess up your finances. But every now and then it's fun.

I believe the posting is wrong though, I was always told expect 1/4 of the posted jackpot (assuming you're the sole winner) if you get a lump sum.

- The lump sum is usually 1/2 of the posted amount, full amount is over 20 years annuity if you chose it.- Uncle Sam takes 1/2 of what's left

Then again, you do hear about how the lottery really screws people up. Either they blow it all away, or it destroys relationships (friends and family).

This comment was edited on Aug 30, 2010, 15:57.

"Space. It seems to go on and on forever. But then you get to the end and a gorilla starts throwing barrels at you." -Fry, Futurama

It's hit and miss, I got hooked on watching "The Office", it's not too bad and I can only watch comedy TV shows that don't have a laugh track.

I really enjoyed "The Office" for a couple of seasons. I can't stand it anymore, I don't know if I'm tired of Steve Carrell or the show in its entirety but I just can't sit through it anymore. I did like the wedding episode and the after-effect Pam realizing Michael was doing her mom, but that's about it.

TV shows are like books: for every good work, there are dozens (if not hundreds) of horrible works. It's a matter of finding the gems in the manure.

I still find enjoyable TV shows, but too many of them stay on past their prime.

"Space. It seems to go on and on forever. But then you get to the end and a gorilla starts throwing barrels at you." -Fry, Futurama

mch wrote on Aug 30, 2010, 11:12:I need to give Mad Men another try. I've watched the first episode a few times but it never really got its claws into me. Going to have to try to get a little further with it this time.

Same here.

I caught the first few episodes and while I thought it was interesting and high-quality it just didn't grab me.

Maybe because it's not on a channel I view often so I just didn't notice it was on, but that's less of a factor now that I DVR shows all the time. So, who knows.

I think I might give it a shot, maybe just throw the discs on my Netflix queue.

"Space. It seems to go on and on forever. But then you get to the end and a gorilla starts throwing barrels at you." -Fry, Futurama

. I took a look, and it was actually a silhouette of a scissors cutting the cord covered by the red "no-no" bar...

Plus, won't that just give really really young kids ideas?

It reminds me of an episode of Better Off Ted. One of the main characters is throwing food at her monitor, something obviously stupid and insane to do. She got the idea from a memo that got sent out asking people to not throw food at their monitor.

"Space. It seems to go on and on forever. But then you get to the end and a gorilla starts throwing barrels at you." -Fry, Futurama

This morning I noticed a small sticker on the power cord on an electric shaver, which I assumed would warn against dunking it in water. I took a look, and it was actually a silhouette of a scissors cutting the cord covered by the red "no-no" bar... That's right, it is warning not to cut the power cord.

I vaguely recall seeing that sticker on a power cord, but I don't recall what it was for.

I guess they just want to cover their butts. Maybe for stuff that's portable (such as a shaver) instead of something larger (such as a TV) they don't want some idiot suing them because they plugged it in near the sewing machine or at the kitchen table where kids do arts and crafts.

Still, it seems a bit much.

While we're at it, no filled gas cans in the oven!

This comment was edited on Aug 25, 2010, 16:50.

"Space. It seems to go on and on forever. But then you get to the end and a gorilla starts throwing barrels at you." -Fry, Futurama

Verno wrote on Aug 16, 2010, 11:38:Ian McShane was also amazing on the shortlived NBC show Kings. That show being canceled was criminal, NBC scheduling had their head up their ass and totally screwed up the marketing.

Kings really was a good show, I was sorry to see it leave. Check out the wikipedia page, apparently the network flip-flopped on their stance of the bible-story-centric show. Likewise the marketing prior to the air of the pilot was a little confusing.

At one point, the whole series was available for free on Hulu but I can't check that now. I *think* it was on Netflix OnDemand as well.

Worth the watch if you have some free time.

Ant wrote on Aug 16, 2010, 11:37:Does this miniseries have many action/fight scenes, nudity, etc. like Starz's Spartacus and HBO's Rome?

I enjoyed the Starz series Spartacus, but cheezus that show was out there. They turned up the "blood" dial to 11, I think it's bloodier at times than the film 300. A fair bit of nudity as well.

An interesting take on the tale, but wow.

-EDIT-Said "Rome" when I meant to say Spartacus. The recent Starz series Spartacus was the uber-violent one.

This comment was edited on Aug 16, 2010, 13:11.

"Space. It seems to go on and on forever. But then you get to the end and a gorilla starts throwing barrels at you." -Fry, Futurama

That being said, as far as I can remember every PS3 comes with a HD built in it, and personally (your mileage might vary) I have yet to meet someone that has bought an Xbox360 without a hard drive.

This is true but MS and Sony generally require that your game be playable from disc. Console developers would love it if HD installs were mandatory but alas, that's not the case just yet.

Some Sony games require installation, not the whole thing mind you but still a decent chunk.

My PS3 is a constant battle of freeing up space, granted I have the smaller HDD but still... its a pain. Between games having mandatory installs, large/frequent game saves, and the very rare PSN demo/purchase, I fill up way too quickly.

I'm already playing disk-space-manager fairly often with my PS3, almost to the point of wanting to upgrade the HDD.

Consoles are becoming too much like PCs. Don't get me wrong, I love PC gaming but I play the console to get away from some of the PC stuff. A "set it and forget it" attitude, not worrying about hardware requirements or HDD space, etc. If I have to start worrying about those things, then the only thing I'm getting out of the console is the console-only games.

"Space. It seems to go on and on forever. But then you get to the end and a gorilla starts throwing barrels at you." -Fry, Futurama

Dev wrote on Aug 10, 2010, 15:58:Yeah, he needs to press criminal charges against the passenger so that he can defend himself in his OWN criminal trial. I mean people flying on airlines have gotten arrested for far less, like talking back to a flight attendant. The passenger not only failed to follow his directions, but also whacked the guy upside the head. There's plenty basis there for criminal charges based on past issues like this.

Exactly, considering what happened I don't doubt that the attendant will have to face criminal charges... I imagine that's an automatic thing if you purposely hit the emergency exit slide without an emergency.

That being said, the passenger should get nailed as well. In today's US climate, going up against a flight attendant (and possibly striking him) will get you tackled and arrested mighty quick.

I could see the anger -> temporary insanity for the attendant, I could also see an (unsuccessful) argument of getting hit so hard he was in a daze or whatever.

Considering his experience and activity in other attendant functions, it seems a little out of character.

"Space. It seems to go on and on forever. But then you get to the end and a gorilla starts throwing barrels at you." -Fry, Futurama

Nice followup on the Toyota car crash guy. Whether or not everyone really was a victim of a runaway car remains to be seen, but if that's the case I feel bad for the guy losing something like 3 years of his life.

"Space. It seems to go on and on forever. But then you get to the end and a gorilla starts throwing barrels at you." -Fry, Futurama

Creston wrote on Aug 9, 2010, 13:29:That's not really true, at least in my experience. A buddy brought over his copy of Just Cause 2 for the PS3, since I only have it on the PC. First it had to install a fucking update, then it had to install the game on my drive, then it had to download some kind of patch (I think), and THEN we could finally play. Took an easy 20 minutes or so. It was ridiculous.

I felt that way for the latest Metal Gear Solid game, I guess #4.

Download firmware, then a long install process. I finally get to play a while later.

To make matters worse, 1-2 days later it had to install AGAIN because I was in a different part of the game. I think this one was like 10-12 minutes, while I got to watch Snake smoke cigarettes. I think there was even a *third* install time, but I don't recall for sure.

It's a console. I'm fine with firmware updates for stability and such, but for PSN it's annoying.

But mandatory installs on top of that... yikes. I played console games so I wouldn't have to worry about installs and such.

"Space. It seems to go on and on forever. But then you get to the end and a gorilla starts throwing barrels at you." -Fry, Futurama

mch wrote on Aug 9, 2010, 11:31:Funny, I decided yesterday that the History channel had died when I checked On Demand and the only programming they had available was reality TV shows like fucking Ice Truckers.

I'll admit, Ice Road Truckers was one of the very few reality shows I watched... I think it was for 1-2 seasons that it kept my attention.

Not so much because of competition, but seeing the stuff they have to deal with in terms of ice, weather, road conditions, etc. Also how they had to treat the trucks so they could handle the harsh temperatures.

In all honesty, it wasn't until my late teens that I heard that *this* was how they had to ship stuff up there. Until then I assumed it was ice breaking ships, so when they had a show about it I decided to give it a whirl.

I used to watch more documentary stuff in the past: Discovery, Military, History channels. However lately I haven't caught much.

"Space. It seems to go on and on forever. But then you get to the end and a gorilla starts throwing barrels at you." -Fry, Futurama

The "Does It Matter If They Get Comic Book Movies Right?" editorial was alright.

I don't mind if they don't get my favorite comic book characters 100% accurate, so long as they keep to the basic premise and don't make a horrible movie.

I'm fine if Green Lantern's costume looks different or if they tweak his origins here-or-there. I'll be more upset if a comicbook -> movie sucks in general than if they mess with the origins a little.

Besides, like the guys states, even the comics can't keep things straight. They retcon the comics constantly, they can't help themselves. So the question is, which version do we stick with? We're going to offend SOMEONE about the details so how much do we keep? etc

Actually, The Green Lantern is a good example of retconning: for a while the GL used his willpower + imagination to make constructs. Now-a-days in the comic Green is the visible representation of the emotion "Willpower", that's its place in the emotional spectrum. Yellow is fear, Red is anger, Orange is greed, Violet is love, etc.

But someone who hasn't read the comics in 3+ years might not know that, so if they saw that in the film they'd flip out that it wasn't just "the glow" that the Oans mastered millennium ago, or it's not from a chunk of the green element, or a meteorite crafted into a lantern and now used by Alan Scott, etc.

That being said, they need to stay in the ballpark. If you make Superman, keep him as a Kryptonian with the basic range of powers and the super-wholesome attitude, a pillar of hope. Don't turn him into the "Dark Knight" just to make him edgier and to try to rake in the cash from people that like Dark Knight. I mention that because there was a rumor the next Superman flick would follow that route, and because the TV show Smallville has Clark Kent calling himself the Blur and acting like Batman

If going with Hal Jordan, then try to stay in his ballpark.

This comment was edited on Aug 9, 2010, 15:51.

"Space. It seems to go on and on forever. But then you get to the end and a gorilla starts throwing barrels at you." -Fry, Futurama

I think that's on netflix streaming, but I've not seen it since it came out, decades ago...

I'll tell you what I want: 1941 on bluray...

I actually sat through Brewster's a couple of months ago, after not seeing the film in many a year. I still enjoyed it. And Real Genius never gets old, I watch it maybe every 1-2 years for some reason or another. Top Secret, eh not so much.

But some other 80s/70s movies I can't sit through any more, either through personal preference/growth/etc or the movie simply hasn't aged well.

As for TV, there are some shows I cannot sit through anymore from way back. Transformers (the original), GI Joe, and Murphy Brown. Meanwhile I'm still fine with a bunch of (more contemporary) cartoons, MASH, and the Mary Tyler Moore Show. Poor analogies, but whatever.

This comment was edited on Aug 9, 2010, 15:21.

"Space. It seems to go on and on forever. But then you get to the end and a gorilla starts throwing barrels at you." -Fry, Futurama

Verno wrote on Aug 9, 2010, 11:48:Agreed, I prefer the UK approach to TV. They tend to go very high budget, location shoots and so on. It's expensive so you get less episodes per year but it's of a much higher quality.

I'm OK with shorter seasons, but some of the shows that I got into seemed to only get 1 or 2 seasons on top of that. So depending on the show maybe 12 to 20 episodes total. Jekyll and Fawlty Towers were only 6 episodes per year, with Jekyll having only 1 year and Fawlty Towers having 2.

I'm not saying those shows should should stretch themselves thin using the US hit-show method (20+ a year, for 5 years). Maybe just 10 a year for 2 or 3 years so we can get 20-30 episodes total, especially if it's a show with an ongoing story arch. Ending Jekyll in that state just stunk.

Barring Doctor Who, of course, which has been running for decades in one form or another numbering a gazillion episodes. And Merlin, which I guess was picked up for later seasons by a US company and now has a large schedule.

This comment was edited on Aug 9, 2010, 15:08.

"Space. It seems to go on and on forever. But then you get to the end and a gorilla starts throwing barrels at you." -Fry, Futurama

Yifes wrote on Aug 5, 2010, 18:54:Actually they started working on SC2 in 2003, and did not begin full development until 2005. Taking 5-6 years to make a game is not inconsistent with the RTS team's previous effort, Warcraft 3.

That's 7 years if they started in 2003, not 5-6. You're welcome to your opinion but when I play Starcraft 2 I do not see a game that should have taken even half that time.

Well, if what Yifes says is true then it depends what you call "full development." If from 2003-2005 they were just spit-balling storyline ideas, deciding on an engine, and playing around with new netcode, then it wouldn't be far fetched to say that 2003-2005 "count" as only 0.5-1.0 years of development.

Especially if you're saying "this game looks like they spent only X years on it. I imagine they were spending a lot of resources in the early days on WoW.

At first glance, it looks very similar to the old. But you have to realize the old one was a 2D game with sprites while the new game is 3D with polygons... as far as programming goes that's a big change.

So while it may look and play like an expansion, it really is a new animal under the hood. Unfortunately I didn't follow the game that closely so I don't know the story: did they buy an engine, did they build upon WC3, did they start from scratch, etc.

Now, if you want to say you don't think it looks good enough to warrant that amount of dev time... that's a personal preference that I will not argue against.

"Space. It seems to go on and on forever. But then you get to the end and a gorilla starts throwing barrels at you." -Fry, Futurama

A while back on tvtome.com (which was eventually gobbled up by tv.com) I used to post to the forums quite a bit for a number of shows. I don't recall if my contributions to the Notes and Allusions were ever accepted, but I digress.

I posed to the FORUM, repeat FORUM, about a specific episode on Law and Order: SVU. It was about 8 sentences, grouped into 2 paragaphs ( 4 each).

The douche that got appointed over-watch of that show's forum started editing our flippin' comments... somehow. He posted a big item about how he would not allow multiple paragraphs, this, or that. He even commented out some other stuff.

Needless to say, I was quite annoyed at the nerve. I wasn't alone, a bunch of people started flipping out.

But no, he was a little Napolean of a site that had his vision about what would be posted and how it would look, and acted accordingly.

I imagine Wikipedia is worse than that, as you have people that believe they are *the* expert on the subject and believe that anyone that posts something that they don't agree with is wrong. Just one of them in the room is horrid, but put 2 in the room and it's a fiasco.

As such, I don't bother with submitting updates to Wikipedia even when I notice something wrong in a mundane article about a comic book character or what-not.

"Space. It seems to go on and on forever. But then you get to the end and a gorilla starts throwing barrels at you." -Fry, Futurama